


Friends With Benefits

by CopperBeech



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: 1862 Argument (Good Omens), Angst, Aziraphale has Trust Issues, Bastille Scene (Good Omens), Breakfast in Bed, Comfort Sex, Dining at the Ritz (Good Omens), Don't copy to another site, Erotic moments with cocoa, Gratuitous Opera References, Hurt/Comfort, I can't help myself, M/M, Mild Smut, Oblivious Aziraphale (Good Omens), One-Sided Relationship, Pining, The Blitz (Good Omens), The Night At Crowley's Flat (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2019-12-05
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:20:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21682849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperBeech/pseuds/CopperBeech
Summary: Aziraphale starts something in the Bastille that gets out of his control. He's not used to that.One of them's in love. The other wants to insist it's only a dalliance. It's going to be a rough ride.“Don’t try to fool me, my dear. That is a temptation, for me to believe that, to imagine I’ve redeemed you, and I know you can’t love, or you wouldn’t be a demon.” He reaches two fingers up to Crowley’s cheekbones, one under each yellow, slitted eye, as if to remind him they’re still Hell-eyes, serpent-eyes, whatever’s on his tongue (chocolate, the angel thinks, and the phantoms of my kisses). “No more of this talk, or we shall have to stop. These pleasures are only what they are, but all the same I should hate to abandon them.”There’s a short silence. “So should I,” says Crowley, in a tone of concession.“There. So by the power of Heaven I abjure you – “ he needs to make this playful, he can’t be angry in this bed that’s just been so full of soft delights, something’s tugging at him inside and he doesn’t like it – “speak no more of this.”
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 148
Kudos: 252





	1. Nearly In Your Arms

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Thette](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thette/gifts), [Wren Truesong (waywren)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/waywren/gifts), [hurry_sundown](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hurry_sundown/gifts).
  * Inspired by [[Fan Art] Barely Counts as a Sin](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21300560) by [tabbystardust](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tabbystardust/pseuds/tabbystardust). 



> Rated Explicit because of the first chapter, but not really a smutfic (I've got those) and gifted to the fellow fans who gave me electronic hugs when I was unhappy with the first version of this and pulled it down.
> 
> I’ve always fought a bit shy of interpretations that imagine these two as outright lovers before the not-Apocalypse. It's been done successfully -- I salute CynSyn's Demon In The Music Box especially for its edgy Aziraphale, Samson: A Duet by amdg2846 for sensual imagery and emotional rawness, and racketghost's utterly erudite Strange Moons series for historical nuance and a keen sense of what love means in the midst of war.
> 
> And then along came Tabbystardust's wicked fanart of, um, reward for rescue in the Bastille (q.v.). Every time I came back to this sumptuous image I thought that Aziraphale's expression was a little... smug and canny? How would it have played out if they'd started something there? I guarantee you that the Aziraphale that developed out of that thought experiment is one you’ll want to bitch-slap by halfway through, even if he eventually gets the memo.
> 
> come say hello on Tumblr @ CopperPlateBeech

“Here…?” Crowley breathes, close to his ear.

"Yes. While you have time stopped. Who’s to know?”

“You astonish me, angel.” Though it doesn’t sound as if he’s done anything of the sort.

“Don’t be silly. You were showing off for me like one of Titian’s models."

It’s in the Bastille, of all places, that Aziraphale decides to let him. He’s known for some time what Crowley's after; he’s a demon, tempting is his job, he’s going to keep in form; he’s probably got some notion that luring an angel into carnal pleasures will earn him some sort of extra feather in his cap back in Hell. Aziraphale can forgive him (that’s what angels do) for not understanding that there’s nothing wicked about “carnal pleasures;” not willingly enjoyed and given by those free to do as they like. There’s no difference between this and the crepes he’d come over to sample (except, certainly, that this is more repeatable and requires less fuss).

And, well, Crowley has a particularly eager glow; for someone chaffing him about his wardrobe (yes, he's imagined Crowley seeing him dressed like that, and didn’t it seem to have an effect?), the demon is nearly as dandified and intent on looking fetching. They’ve been fencing around this for a while.

He likes it. And here, more than anywhere, it's like a defiance of the frenzy for death and suffering that surrounds them; two beings coming together with no other object than one another’s pleasure. It's easy to make the very Gallic cheek-kiss of greeting and gratitude telegraph something more.

After a long, breathless moment, Crowley’s hand barely comes to rest on his hip. Oh, dear boy, so quick on the uptake. He slides his cheek until the corners of their mouths touch, feeling the hand tighten slightly, almost as if from shock.

“You chose an odd moment.”

“Odd moments heighten the savour, I find.”

“ _Do_ you.”

There’s always that first moment of knowing what a lover tastes like, the way his lips move (Aziraphale likes women as beings, but they do nothing for his senses), the smell of him, whether he’s clumsy and pushy with his tongue or delicate and tentative. Crowley takes possession, but slowly, feeling his way. The long fingers are in his hair now, pulling a little. Crowley’s got more hair, and the angel lifts a hand to return the tug, knowing lovers will do what they want done to them. He can tell from the way the kiss deepens that he’s right. The curling length of it is really quite luscious.

“It’ll have to be whatever we can do standing,” says Crowley, almost into his mouth. “This place is an abbatoir.”

“The more reason to bless it with our pleasure.”

The next moment he’s backed against the wall. It’s cold, and feels damp through the brocade even though it isn’t. Crowley’s hand rakes down from his hip to hook him behind one knee, lifting it so that only the wall and his remaining foot support him. The court shoes are the only badly-fitted part of the outfit, and there’s a little clunk as that one falls free. It doesn’t matter, because Crowley’s narrow hips are pinning him to the wall and there’s something promising and delicious inside those breeches, he’s already stiff inside his own, and the slow rhythms of pressure and release, more than the actual friction, make him stiffen more. Those thin, eloquent lips trace his jawline. Ahh, silver-tongued tempter. He lets Crowley think for another handful of thrusts that he’s in charge of this, then closes both fists lightly in those long all-but-scarlet locks and bends his head to the demon’s throat, nipping, sucking, flicking with the tip of his tongue. A lover’s pleasure is a greater joy even than what a lover can give to him.

This is what they don’t understand in Hell and possibly not even in Heaven: that giving yourself up to this is redemption, is the way back to the Garden where we all were innocent. Demons can’t, he’s sure, love with the white and overpowering blaze that is an angel’s, can’t love at all, but they can still, if they let themselves, feel this. He’s going to make a demonstration.

He tugs again at the long cascade of hair, slips a thumb up the soft throat, gives it to the demon to suck. The thrusts against him become harder and a little quicker. He’s grinding back, his shoulderblades braced on the old smooth bricks that have looked impassively on decades of suffering, _Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it?_

And perhaps it is a new thing. Crowley’s needy, breathless, not at all as he’d imagined a demon, it’s like showing a young lover, not an old tempter, what it’s all right to feel. There’s more pleasure in doing this through clothes, back against a frigid wall, than he’d felt with the sweet practiced Ganymedes of Persepolis or Herculaneum; the kissing tenderer one moment, fiercer the next. There’s a long moment when everything is tight and all but painful at his centre, there’s the demon whining a high note into his ear and biting down just hard enough on the cord of muscle at the side of his neck, and then thumping him against the wall once, twice, five times before a long strain of pressure that ends in a slack gasp. He’s already spilled into his own smallclothes, hot, moist.

The demon’s actually _trembling_ against him, as if what’s just happened isn’t enough to drain the urgency from him, pressing into him again and once more hard, then releasing his leg to lean both forearms into the wall. His voice is shaky, but there’s a laugh in it.

“Ah. See? Barely counts as a sin.”

Aziraphale can’t tell if Crowley’s addressing him, or talking to himself, the words are so soft. He chooses to believe the former. Lifts the disheveled hair away from the demon’s face, delicately, with his fingertips.

“Oh my dear. Don’t you know? It doesn’t count at all.”

Every trace of the encounter vanishes with their aristocratic clothes. The crepes have an extra savour.

* * *

After that, they meet. Not regularly, and not with stated intent. There’ll be a tiresome blessing on the other side of a mountain range where the demon was going anyway, a trivial temptation somewhere along Aziraphale’s road that’s hardly worth the day’s journey for anyone not already bound there. They have a long-standing Arrangement, that doesn’t change. And there’s always a place to go, lodgings where they don’t ask questions, warm gardens on summer nights that revive the memory of Eden. They learn in Vienna (both there to pull the strings of Metternich and Talleyrand) that the angel’s limbs will loosen from barely more than that divided tongue flickering around his ear; in a run-down rooming house in Prague, that Crowley comes hard and pleading when he’s coaxed a little extra from behind with the slicked tip of a Celestial finger. Aziraphale’s been there and done that, all of it. The demon didn’t know what he was getting into, and yes, they make that joke.

Crowley offers to be a woman, which is a particular demonic dexterity, male, female and everything in between, but Aziraphale demurs; it’s not a taste. “All right, then,” says the demon, “I’ll always be like this for you.” It sounds like a gift, as if he’s forgoing something he might like, but he never complains, and he’s only she when the most convenient house of accommodation is one that truly won’t serve men who go with men. The most cynical of old procuresses sometimes jib at that. Then demi-mondaine Crowley leaves herself at the threshold, closing the door already hard and insistent, pressing the angel against the wall, _remember the first time?_

One morning, in an expensive auberge in the Loire Valley, where they’ve taken a break from their respective assignments in Paris during the chaos of the 1830’s – word is that the proprietor is sympathetic to gentlemen with _mutual attachments_ – Aziraphale wakes up, to his considerable surprise. Crowley uses sleep as a drug; Aziraphale thinks it’s overrated – a vice, as sex isn’t, throwing away the awareness She gave us instead of using it to experience Her Creation. Most often he’ll leave these rendezvous while the demon’s still sleeping, unless it’s a rough place where he wants to stand guard; he’ll deposit a little kiss, too light to wake him (that’s what angels do), and be gone till the next time.

But now first light is filtering in around the curtains and Crowley’s got an arm and a leg flung over him, weighing him to the bed. The demon’s head is thrown back against the pillow, exposing his throat in a vulnerable arc; his face is more peaceful than it’s ever looked, his cock a little full as human corporations will do in sleep. It’s pretty.

The yellow eyes flicker open as he strokes it, and then there’s a kiss that’s like the distillation of all the sweetness of this world; the demon’s learned exactly how he likes to be tongued and nipped, how to bring him to flame. (They joke about the sword too, how readily he gives it away.) What they do is more _making love_ than it’s been yet, gradual, delicate, asking permissions, cherishing the curves and textures of each other’s bodies. It’s not the explosion of lust that happened in the Bastille, but it’s deeper, more precious and practiced.

At one point he’s sure the manservant from downstairs pauses outside the door; but the inn is, as they’ve been told, discreet, and a knock comes later, asking if the gentleman desires anything. _Only this delicious demon_ , thinks Aziraphale, but he asks for cocoa, a taste that’s grown on him since it came into Europe, and he closes the bed curtains to accept the tray (discretion calls for maintaining fictions on both sides). They sip from the same cup, and lick the last of it from each other’s mouths, and when the demon teases him over his fondness for all the good things earth has to eat and drink, Aziraphale sets aside the cup and scoots down in the bed, chocolate still sweet on his tongue, to make – once again – a demonstration. He’s learned that Crowley relishes this, to be tasted and savoured, and he draws it out, until there’s a musky spill that mingles with the lingering flavour of the cocoa, and the fingers wound in his hair loosen and stroke the short curls.

“I love you,” sighs Crowley, and Aziraphale freezes. He can tell that Crowley senses it.

“Don’t say that,” he manages at last. “Don’t spoil this.”

“Not spoiling anything, angel. Just a truth. Been one for a while.”

Aziraphale reaches up, stops the stroking fingers.

“Demons don’t tell truths.” Demons don’t wake to tender mornings in a canopied bed, either, he thinks, they’re schooled in the bitter and bleak, but he boxes away that uncertainty. “Don’t try to fool me, my dear. That _is_ a temptation, for me to believe that, to imagine I’ve redeemed you, and I know you can’t love, or you wouldn’t _be_ a demon.” He reaches two fingers up to Crowley’s cheekbones, one under each yellow, slitted eye, as if to remind him they’re still Hell-eyes, serpent-eyes, whatever’s on his tongue (chocolate, the angel thinks, and the phantoms of my kisses). “No more of this talk, or we shall have to stop. These pleasures are only what they are, but all the same I should hate to abandon them.”

There’s a short silence. “So should I,” says Crowley, in a tone of concession.

“There. So by the power of Heaven I abjure you – “ he needs to make this playful, he can’t be angry in this bed that’s just been so full of soft delights, something’s tugging at him inside and he doesn’t like it – “speak no more of this.”

He’s leaving by the post carriage. The dispute is firmly put away by the time it arrives, and they know when they’ll meet again. It seems important to make sure of that. The angel reminds himself that they are, strictly speaking, still adversaries; and he's glad Crowley didn't try to press his point, because he's not ready to give this up.

After some point, Aziraphale can’t say exactly when, there are no more mortal lovers. The novelty's always been appealing, a taste from one dish and then another, but he doesn’t miss knowing that his partner’s life will be as brief as a moth’s compared to his own, and it’s liberating not to have to hide his uncanny Celestial strength, instead free to use it in their joinings – holding Crowley up with the demon’s limbs wrapped around him, guiding his movements so that he can utterly surrender; or clamping both his wrists tight in one hand, gripping a sharp hipbone with the other as he fucks into that spare _croupe_ sweating and merciless. The demon seems more yielding every time they meet, _use me as you will_ , and he feels a little flicker of guilt and sometimes sets aside his own release, only gives. It’s not that he hasn’t treated mortals the same way, but something inside him’s at war now, resolutely reminding him that this is only indulgence (why else have they been given these corporations?), another urge driving him to what’s almost protectiveness (how can a demon need protecting?), he doesn’t know what’s happening and it’s a little frightening; but he can’t make himself stop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title draws on the Marseillaise: "Ils vient jusque dans vos bras." The Enemy is all but in your arms.
> 
> Next: Paradise Lost


	2. Paradise Lost

By midcentury, London's claimed them. Both their Head Offices seem to think they belong in the centre of Empire, and Aziraphale takes advantage of the indefinite posting to indulge another passion, the love of books that he’s nurtured through libraries and scriptoria for centuries. He takes a hundred-year lease on a shopfront that faces East and fills it, first with the volumes he’s accumulated, always stored somewhere in trunks or rented spaces; then adds to them in a joyous spree of hoarding that finds chests and crates sent by ship and train and miracle back from every metropolis or estate where the Head Office sends him. Sometimes those explorations cross his meetings with Crowley, and it’s hard to know which appetite to feed; he finds the demon looking at him oddly, thoughtfully as he roves through the libraries of estates down on their luck, opens pages that haven’t been cut by any hand before his.

Crowley’s found a townhouse – his tastes are as luxurious as the angel’s if in a different way; he likes the height of fashion, and open spaces, and pays handsomely to maintain an impeccable garden. It makes things easier. As long as they’re not careless, there can be evenings among the books, nights in the townhouse appointed to the last flourish of style. Hell doesn’t call on Crowley often, though once or twice there’s a hurried departure (on foot, miracles leave traces), with clothes not quite arranged and stick left behind, but in this metropolis people are used to seeing gentlemen return home after dining too well. It’s actually a little exhilarating.

They meet in St. James’ Park, feeding the birds, two top-hatted gentlemen taking the air; the park becomes their weekly rendezvous, where they compare their assignments, make their plans to meet in private. Aziraphale files reports, always reminding Upstairs that he’s found ways of learning what his Adversary is up to.

They get careless. They go out in public together, daring to mingle their pleasures – making the circuit of luxurious places to dine, enjoying the anticipation of _later_ as the angel slurps oysters and Crowley runs a thumb around the rim of his wineglass, playing a note like the music of the spheres. Aziraphale spends more nights at the townhouse, well into the next day sometimes, breakfasting lazily in Crowley’s vast bed – nibbling morsels they don’t strictly need, and that Crowley doubtless wouldn’t eat if the angel weren’t there to place them between his teeth, for the pleasure of having his fingers nipped. The sweet long mornings are too hard to forego, the crumbs and honey licked off one another’s lips.

One midday, Aziraphale sees a figure slipping away around the corner as he leaves, an unmistakable junior angel. The pale livery of Heaven stands out in this metropolis full of black and dun; Aziraphale’s is the only thing near to it, and the sinking feeling at his centre more than any sequence of thought tells him he’s been seen.

Worse, he knows that when Heaven's concerned enough about its operatives to send out these little snitches for some oversight, Hell usually is too. He wants to go back in and warn Crowley, but that would be an even greater folly than what they’ve already done.

A few days later, a sternly worded letter of reprimand arrives: Gabriel reminds him about the unwisdom of _taking risks_ and _exceeding orders_ and _engaging the Adversary too closely._ At least that's all there is. He knows he’s being watched. He goes to the park anyway.

Crowley’s there. He doesn’t expect the almost physical relief he feels, but it drains away when he sees how the demon’s moving: stiffly, with an occasional hiss as he shifts his weight on his feet.

Someone’s hurt him. They don’t do _sternly worded letters_ in Hell.

He hears Aziraphale approaching before the angel can greet him. “They said I was playing with fire,” he says, looking neither right nor left.

“Odd choice of words.”

“Told me to stop _freelancing_. Said they didn’t know what my _game_ was but that _taking you on at close quarters_ was above my pay grade. Here I thought I was doing so well.” It should be a joke, but it’s only bitter.

The silence stretches out a little too long. “Look, I’ve been thinking…”

He wants a favour. The teasing, bantering demon’s gone. He doesn’t even pick up when Aziraphale throws him a double entendre that he’d usually grin at: _We lend each other a hand when needed_. He barely knows this creature. His stomach gives a sick swoop when Crowley passes him the note.

And he’s angry. That Crowley wants something that’s from Heaven; that he might think of using it on himself; that he’s retreated into this other person that Aziraphale can’t recognize. Surely Crowley understands that they’d know where he got Holy Water, that Aziraphale would go down with him.

 _Fraternising_ is the word you speak in the park, where everything could have ears, not _the peach tart you ate off my fingers last Saturday morning_ , not _I only just learned what it does to you when I draw my nails down that long spine._ He’s in a cold world that suddenly makes no sense and Crowley won’t look him in the eye, and when the demon repeats back the word it’s like the edge of a knife.

It’s got to stop. Because Crowley’s taken risks that an angel will never have to, he sees that now. He won’t give him what he asks for, but he will give him this: safety. If anyone’s watching, they’ll see an angry angel stalking away from a grim demon, who’s no doubt just been told the limits that Heaven will tolerate.

If only Crowley hadn’t spoiled it by calling after him.

* * *

He sends a letter by post, but there’s no answer. Doesn’t open the shop for three days, wondering if he’s left anything at the townhouse, trying to think of an excuse to call. Finally he takes the risk and just goes.

There’s the faint remnants of a scorched Hell-smell at the street door still, and his heart goes hollow; he reminds himself he’s a Principality and knocks with the head of his stick. A maidservant in a ruffled pinafore answers (he’s never seen staff there before, and it jars him), and says no, the master’s gone abroad, we’ve been told to close up. He can see sheets over the furniture in the small parlour.

But he senses the demon up above him – sleeping, alone, in that enormous bed.

* * *

The absence of Crowley from his life makes him unaccountably less resolute, diffident, and since his reprimand Heaven seems less welcoming. He keeps his head down, does as he’s told, and for a long time the only pleasure he pursues is the exquisite way in which the mortals continue to refine their cooking and winemaking. He dines out, but becomes known as the eccentric whose only table companion is a book; he catches people tapping their temples when they think he’s not looking. He drinks cocoa through the afternoons in the shop, thinking of that dawn-lit auberge by the Loire, brewing one cup after another and telling himself it’s all he needs.

After a while he can’t sense Crowley in the house anymore, but over the decade he sees it fall into disrepair, the garden go to seed. He finds an estate agent who can make inquiries and whose discretion will stay bought. He’s just in time to acquire at auction a property whose owner’s presumed dead; he knows better (he’s sure he’d know) but pays the price, only to find it’s sealed with Crowley’s wards and he’s no longer free to pass them.

Humans can, so he sees to it that the woodworm’s kept away and the garden’s put to rights. A few small miracles help things along in the places he can reach. He pays someone to air it out and clear the cobwebs every Spring, and manages some irregular legalities so that the demon can retake possession, if he ever chooses to. Sometimes in this growing metropolis he still catches a feel of Crowley, but never close enough.

England’s a ferment; there’s unimaginable wealth and sickening poverty, and Heaven seems to want him to play politics, but he regularly takes a busman’s holiday in the slums, healing what he can, easing what he can’t. He hears, from time to time, of a man whose eyes no one ever sees, who teaches urchins to steal and not get caught, to nick from grocer’s carts and well-off gentlemen’s pockets, and once he catches a street Arab of barely twelve who’s about to administer the dip.

“Who taught you this?” he all but shouts. But the boy only breaks and runs. He miracles a guinea into the child’s pocket, and sends a memorandum to Heaven about the possibility of diverting the young from crime with a judicious helping hand, but it isn’t answered.

He can’t even think of mortal lovers for a long time – it’s too bittersweet, he reminds himself, their lives are so brief – but eventually hears of a gentlemen’s club called the Hundred Guineas. At first it seems a place to be accepted, to have companions (he’s accounted the best dancer there, which surprises him). But he’s paying more attention every year, he’s been up to his elbows now in the man-made poverty that’s as brutal a killer as War, Famine, or Pestilence, and he observes how the accommodating young recruits with whom he’s invited to dally actually have few options. When the first companion he chooses for an evening tells a little of his own story, he blesses the boy and leaves.

He might seek a willing partner on his own, but his heart no longer seems in it; he supposes it’s because of the Blackmailer’s Charter, and the wretched example of the playwright Wilde. Heaven wouldn’t thank him for attracting that kind of attention. He could go back to the state he existed in when this corporation was first issued, before he Made An Effort out of curiosity and discovered pleasures that Heaven had never so much as hinted at. But the idea feels a little like dying, and he’s left with his desires and his own hand, pretending to himself that he’s thinking of anything but Crowley.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The pivot in Gaiman's script that made this idea work for me is that bitter spat over the Holy Water in 1862. "Fraternising" is almost the exact term for the Arrangement -- socialising with the adversary and giving him aid -- so why is Crowley so stung by the use of the word? Unless it's been something more...
> 
> Next: Still Haggling At The Price
> 
> Come say hello on Tumblr @CopperPlateBeech


	3. Still Haggling At The Price

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _1906 comes, and with it the much-anticipated opening of the Ritz. He’s curious, but leaving the shop for long has become less inviting, and he feels foolish alone in such a grand place, so he puts it off._  
> 
> 
> _Then one day there’s a flurry of dusting and airing at the townhouse that he pretends he never watches when he goes to take the air, and a few days later a note arrives in a jagged hand:_
> 
> Mr. Anthony J. Crowley requests the pleasure of Mr. A. Z. Fell’s company at the restaurant of the Ritz Hotel, Mayfair, eight o’clock Friday evening.
> 
> If you’re free.
> 
> I’m sorry, angel. I couldn’t stand it. I ran.

It’s been a decadent coda to a long century of empire. King Edward comes to the throne in 1901; the Widow of Windsor no longer sets the tone for the country, society’s more flamboyant and openly pleasure-loving. _Salome_ premieres in 1905 at the Dresden opera, a stew of lust and depravity and Viennese sugar-schmalz. Aziraphale thinks fondly of Wilde, whose play the composer adapted verbatim, and wishes he could have heard it; he slips away for an evening to experience the spectacle, coming home a little stunned. (It’s nothing like what actually happened, but then, neither were Shakespeare’s histories.)

1906 comes, and with it the much-anticipated opening of the Ritz. He’s curious, but leaving the shop for long has become less inviting, and he feels foolish alone in such a grand place, so he puts it off.

Then one day there’s a flurry of dusting and airing at the townhouse that he pretends he never watches when he goes to take the air, and a few days later a note arrives in a jagged hand:

_Mr. Anthony J. Crowley requests the pleasure of Mr. A. Z. Fell’s company at the restaurant of the Ritz Hotel, Mayfair, eight o’clock Friday evening._

_If you’re free._

_I’m sorry, angel. I couldn’t stand it. I ran._

He finds his evening clothes again.

* * *

“Thank you for looking after my house,” says the demon.

“Think nothing of it. I don’t have to tell you what a bank account can sustain after a few millennia.”

There’s bronze everywhere, and pink clouds in the artwork, and it’s almost too much, but the food is beautiful, and the wine first-rate, something that’s come to mean more as the decades pass. Crowley’s elegant, none of the overblown styles of the decade, slim in black wool and satin. He feels he’s let himself get a little shabby, the tailcoat’s two decades out of date.

The talk is like a dance on a poorly supported floor, ready to go out from under them at any moment. There’s the politics of Heaven and Hell; _Michael seems ready to leave all the decisions to Gabriel now. Maybe she’s just tired for the moment._ The consomme whisked away, a second wine served, a fish course. _Dagon’s been preening around trying to snare mortals with their charms, only they haven’t got any._ Cheeses or desserts; he picks a mousse, and Crowley decides to share it; they order champagne. It’s obscenely expensive, but Crowley’s unhesitant about picking up the tab.

“I did leave England for a while,” he says. “Lots of other places in the world, angel. Do you know the Americans have built an automobile that can go over ninety miles an hour? I can’t wait to get my hands on one.”

“It sounds terrifying.”

“That’s the point.”

“When did you decide to open the house again?”

“When I found out you’d been keeping it up.” A brief hesitation. “I just… couldn’t go back there for a while.”

“Forty years.”

“Give or take. But… I have ways of finding things out.”

“Don’t we all.”

Crowley refills their flutes from the ice bucket beside the table. “A toast. To loyal -- friends.”

Aziraphale nods, clinks his glass. The waiter hovers.

“If you could have a bottle of this delivered to my room?” says Crowley. “I’d like to entertain my guest to some after-dinner conversation.” The waiter nods, retreats.

“Ah. Your room.”

“The house isn’t quite fit yet.”

Aziraphale suspects he just enjoys showing off.

* * *

“You left rather abruptly."

The waiter’s leaving not one, but two bottles of the outrageous champagne in the ice bucket.

Crowley unknots his tie, sliding down in a velvet-and-nailhead barrel chair with an awkwardness that seems only to have grown on his serpentine corporation.

“Ah. Well, you were right, you know – it wasn’t safe any more. Figure it worked out all right. Give you a chance to move on, find someone new. Maybe a few someones.”

“I haven’t, actually.”

“You astonish me, angel.” This time it sounds sincere. "Used to sample the dessert cart all the time, I'd smell 'em on you." One eyebrow rises as he sips. "Noticed when you stopped."

Awkward. “It just – didn’t seem worth the bother. Inclinations change, I suppose. You?” I have plenty of people to _fraternise_ with, angel.

“Nah. Been on the move. Footloose Anthony J. Crowley, that’s me.”

“When did _Anthony_ happen?”

Crowley pours again for both of them, sits back down. “Dunno. Just took my fancy.” He sips. “Never know what I’m going to fancy.”

Aziraphale looks at him, considering. He’s still beautiful, maybe even more so; the spare fashion he’s adopted suits him, black on black, the velvet bowtie dangling now on either side of his open collar. He remembers how Crowley’s always hated anything restricting around his throat, how sensitive it is to the lightest touch.

Crowley’s blank, black lenses are gazing back. It’s remarkable how every posture and gesture of the demon is a question, as if he were made to ask questions, to make you question yourself. Aziraphale sets down the flute, stands, crosses the space between them; eases the other flute from Crowley’s hand (it passes without resistance), lifts the glasses from the yellow eyes. The demon doesn’t move, doesn’t help or resist, only looks up at him.

The first touch of lips brings a thump upward from the base of his spine, as if the earth’s thrown him. Then Crowley hauls him down, into what feels like forty years of kisses compressed into a single instant. He’s straddling those long thighs, it’s like the Bastille in gracious surroundings, pressing against each other through their clothes, everything they were pretending away in the dining room (that faux Heaven) coming down in an avalanche. Desire becomes an ache in a matter of seconds, and then the demon heaves them both up out of the chair with more strength than he ever imagined Hell to have. For a long moment they’re recreating that whisper of sensation and this flash of sweet pain and the morning when both their tongues were sweet and bitter with chocolate, and then Crowley’s only clutching him in a hard, harsh embrace, breath rasping against his shoulder.

“Angel. Stop.” Crowley’s voice is almost inaudible, even close as he is. “I need it to be love. Tell me you love me.”

The silence draws out while Aziraphale fights down a wild, mutinous impulse to just do as he’s asked and get this behind them, no matter why Crowley wants it. Finally: “Dear, I’m an angel. I feel love for everybody – must do, just as I must believe there’s still good in you. If I can fan that little flame, it’s a blessing. It makes me a better adversary to Hell.”

“I’m not _good_. I do things that hurt people.”

“So do I, sometimes, and on Heaven’s orders… but it’s meant to be for the greater good.”

“And you believe them when they tell you that?”

Aziraphale twists a finger gently in the fiery hair – in the first decade of the twentieth century, it’s regrettably shorter – and says “Leave this be, it’s beneath you. Let me pleasure you again. It’s been so long.”

“If that’s all this is – “ Crowley tries again. “Or else why are you here?”

“To mend fences, dear. We parted so harshly... And to give you this, if you’ll let me.” He brushes his lips against the long throat, but there’s not the shiver he’s learned to expect, just the pressure of closed fists against the small of his back.

“Then say it. This can’t be just Heaven loves all its children and glory _fuckin_ g Hallelujah. There hasn’t been anyone else. You took care of my house. It won’t kill you to just once fucking _say it_.”

“My dear. You lost the intelligence of Love, or you wouldn’t have Fallen. Of course you feel desire, and that isn’t a bad thing, or I wouldn’t feel it too.” That’s not just a general statement, because he’s pressed against the full length of Crowley, and the reminder’s right there between them. “But if I let you tempt me to believe what can’t be, I end by Falling also…”

He considers this. The room seems a little colder.

“What’s happening here, Crowley, really?” he says, trying to step back. “After all this time? Who on your side knows we’re here?”

Crowley does pull away at that, a look in those slitted eyes (Baltic amber, he thinks, or topaz) that could be disbelief or calculation or anger, it’s hard to read. “Don’t, angel. _Please_ don’t.”

But it’s starting to look too perfect: the luxury, the food, the demon’s spare and savoury frame. "I saw how they hurt you before. You asked me for _Holy Water_ for _insurance_. And now you’re not afraid to make this kind of a -- an _exhibition_?” It’s not necessarily Crowley’s fault; Hell can break anybody, and they’ve had time. “You can't blame me for asking if you’re here with instructions.”

Crowley doesn’t have an answer. That’s never happened.

“I can forgive you, Crowley, but…” The yellow eyes are blazing now, and there’s a twinned smear of red that Aziraphale’s never seen in the pale, sharp cheeks. Crowley’s voice is soft, but cold.

“All right, angel.” He picks up the half-full champagne flute, flings it blindly behind him to strike the wall with a tinkling smash. “All right.” He whirls, strides toward the door, yanks it open. Doesn’t turn back as he says, “Don’t look for me.”

The angel’s left alone in the room with its overwrought decor, its opulent bed. He empties his own flute and rings for the waiter.

“The gentleman won’t be returning,” he says when there’s a response. “I’m afraid our, ah, business negotiations fell apart… I’m sorry, but there’s been a little breakage.”

Aziraphale settles the bill.

* * *

He’s able to tell Gabriel that he’s learned to avoid too close engagement with his Adversary; he’s wily, that one, you were right to warn me. It’s dust and ashes in his mouth as he speaks, but he feels safer when it’s said.

He does his job.

  
* * *

Gifts arrive. In 1910, it’s a box of chocolates; he sets them aside, remembering only a few days later that the day they were delivered is the fiftieth anniversary of the shop’s opening. He leaves them until they’re starting to sweat butterfat; but even in that state, they’re perfect when he does taste them. He saves the box.

1914 comes, and war, and as the months pass, stories of a fit-looking red-haired man in civilian clothes (an Irish separatist, some speculate) who’s been handed the white feather in this or that quarter of London. When the girls look into their reticules afterwards, they find photographs of the trench horrors, some enough to make them faint on the street. There’s also a bottle of perfect Cabernet that arrives in July of 1915, and again, the angel only realizes later that the date was Bastille Day.

He’s given his war missions, and does them: blessings in odd places, miracles whose meaning he’ll never understand (the Angels of Mons aren’t his; he suspects Michael, who’s always been suitably warlike). The Armistice is mercy, but not closure; England’s bled dry, a generation ploughed into the mud of France, and after witnessing the wars of history, he wonders if this human passion for mechanization – it used to be only what people could do face to face, after all, with a clumsy metal weapon – is going to be the final trigger for Armageddon.

In 1927, there’s a Kodak of a slyly grinning demon leaning against the fender of a sleek black automobile, looking pleased with all of Creation and especially himself. It’s enclosed with a mint copy of Colonel Lawrence’s war memoir, signed by the notoriously reclusive author on the flyleaf. He turns the photo over, but nothing’s written on the back.

There are other books, other bottles; once in the early 1930’s a new gramophone recording of a part of the first act of Strauss’ _Rosenkavalier_ , with the libretto inside the slipcase. _Salome_ had jarred him enough that he steered away from the composer thereafter, preferring Schubert and Mendelssohn; he follows through the text as the clandestine lovers share a single cup of chocolate in a sumptuous bedroom. The music at that point is perfect imitation Mozart, and the delicate, unexpected beauty (of course that’s it) makes him tear up.

There’s a deep drawer in the desk, one with a lock, and as the Thirties creep on with an increasingly warlike drumbeat, the boxes and bottles and books go into it, one by one.

But he always remembers: “Don’t look for me.”

And then the sirens begin to wail.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from Robert Graves' _Reproach to Julia_.
> 
> _Julia: how Irishly you sacrifice_  
>  Love to pity, pity to ill-humour,  
> Yourself to love, still haggling at the price.
> 
> The Chapter 1 cocoa scene in the auberge, at least until, ahem, familiarities resume, is shamelessly and deliberately lifted from Act I, scene 1 of Strauss’ _Rosenkavalier_. About 10:20, to 13;30, here 
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyuSicgCj-w
> 
> Strauss may seem “classical” to us now, but he was edgy for his time -- dissonant (the final chord of _Salome_ may very well contain every note in the chromatic scale), and attracted to subject matter like matricide ( _Elektra_ ), explicit adultery (the overture to _Rosenkavalier_ opens with graphic auditory porn -- fight me) and necrophilia ( _Salome_ ). Crowley would have been there for that. _Rosenkavalier_ premiered in 1910 and was first recorded in 1933.


	4. Thou Pluckest Me Out, Burning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It can’t happen again, you know.”
> 
> ”Ssss.”
> 
> “No. I mean, after what you did last night. That was like sending up a flare. They’ve already called you out once, they’ll be watching for a long time.”
> 
> “Long time’s not forever.”
> 
> “Maybe… we can still be friends, Crowley.”
> 
> “Friendsss.”

“You’re hurt.”

“ ‘S’ nothing.”

But it isn’t. Aziraphale, after the first stunned shock of what’s happened, catches up with Crowley, who’s getting himself off the tract of the shattered church as quickly as possible – still hopping, even after he reaches the pavement outside, leaning on the fender of the incredibly unscratched car standing at the kerb. Another sideline miracle to make a clatter in Hell.

Aziraphale’s heard stories of the car, is sure he’s seen it once or twice, run across mentions of it connected to the black market and high espionage. Once he went to the windows of the flat over his shop, sometime in the thirties while the war fury was brewing, and he couldn’t be sure it was the one – it was hardly the only Bentley on the roads – but when he drew back the curtain for a better look, it had started smoothly and pulled away.

Crowley’s down on his forearms on the hood now, trying to find a way to bear his weight and get to the driver’s door, and it doesn’t look as if it’s working well for him.

“Take you home?” he ekes out again, in a strained voice. It’s meant to sound nonchalant but succeeds only in being God-awful.

“Yes. And you’re coming in with me.”

"Wouldn’t want to impose.”

“I think it’s me imposing rather. I haven’t the earthliest how to drive this thing, or I would.”

“She’s got a mind of her own. She might let you.” Crowley lets the angel half-haul him along to the driver’s door, scoop his legs inside – Aziraphale winces when he thinks of working the pedals – and starts the engine as the angel pulls himself into the passenger seat. Fire-brigade sirens sound at a distance, and pulses of reddish light, flames in the rubble, skate over the windscreen.

By the time they reach Soho, there’s a faint sheen of sweat on Crowley’s face, and he stumbles and almost falls hoisting himself out of the car. Aziraphale’s seen what Hellfire burns can do to angels, back when there was first war in Heaven, and has an inkling.

The shop’s like an Egyptian tomb, full of the treasures of the decedent, and in fact Aziraphale feels a bit like his own ghost as he glimpses his faint reflection in the windows; no lights, there aren’t blackout curtains large enough. He couldn’t see the base of the spiral stair if he weren’t an angel, but Crowley seems even more sure-eyed, at least enough to reach him and collapse against his shoulder, hard enough to make him stagger.

“Ssssh,” he finds himself saying, like someone gentling a horse, though the demon hasn’t uttered a word. “We need to get you upstairs. On my back.”

He drops the bag of books – later for them – and reaches backward as Crowley sags against him, hooking forearms under the spindly thighs. _(A hand under his knee, lifting as he backed against the wall of the Bastille.)_ The long arms dangle over his chest; breath hisses in his ear. The stairs sing faintly under the weight.

A little moonlight outlines the window of the upstairs flat; the clouds are fitful and thin. He slides Crowley onto the couch, swivels him to bring his feet up onto the upholstered arm. There’s a candle on the side table, and he risks striking a light before closing the blackout curtains. Shadow-show patterns play on the walls and ceiling.

“Oughta be careful with those things, angel. Loads’ve combustible stuff in here.”

“There’s a hurricane cover.” He snaps it onto the candlestick, drops to his knees to pull off Crowley’s shoes as gently as he can. It’s not gentle enough, can’t be. The socks, like the brogues, are burnt through in places, and stick to the soles in others. More hissing as he peels them back, bringing a little skin along in this spot and that, and reveals everything from blisters to what looks horribly like cooked flesh (in the wavering light, he’s spared the absolute knowledge).

There’s running water at least. He’s not sure what good earthly disinfectants will do, but everyone’s been instructed to keep a first-aid kit, and he never knows when he’ll have to tend some human and keep it from looking like a miracle. He sheds his jacket and works as best he can in the flickering candlelight.

“You could have died,” he says finally, giving a name to the horror. “I don’t think it’s ever been done. It could have killed you.”

“Be ’lright. You could’ve been discorporated.”

“Paperwork.”

“Angel.” The voice is thin, husky.

Aziraphale finds himself scooting along on his knees to the other end of the couch, taking Crowley’s extended hand. He looks feverish.

“Body I’ve loved – c’dn’t stand to – think of it going out like that. Fix it, I know. They don’t let us go that easily. But – hurt.” His face is glazed, a sweaty trickle inchworming down from his hair.

“‘N’, y’know, y’r books.”

“Hush.” And what kind of a world is it, what are Heaven and Hell, if a demon can care like this? If it’s possible, then anything he believes could be a lie.

“Let me try to heal you. If I can, and not – make it worse.” He says nothing about what he’s made worse in the past. It’s too huge, and there’s already too much to do.

He’s afraid to try and afraid not to, and the little hum in his hands as he holds the layer of air around the scalded feet feels like something he’s doing for the first time and not the many-thousandth. He jumps as he feels the demon subside into the cushions, but it’s relief and not something worse, and the skin doesn’t exactly heal – Holy burns don’t yield that easily – but it looks more whole, less angry in the uncertain candlelight. He finds a blanket, unfolds it from Crowley’s feet to his head, lifts the dark glasses off delicately and sets them on the end table, kneels again.

“I’ll watch. I know what you get from sleeping.”

For answer Crowley reaches up, pulls the angel’s head down. The kiss is soft, the voice softer.

“Hold me.”

A miracle is like forgetting to draw the blackout curtains; the wrong people might notice it. He doesn’t care, and makes the couch larger. Before he slips under the blanket, still in most of his clothes, he remembers to blow the candle out.

Crowley snuffles against his chest, a restless, noisy sleeper, and presently, as at that inn on the Loire, he surprises himself by sleeping too.

* * *

He wakes in quieter darkness – the sirens have all stopped – with Crowley’s hands on him, not insistent but tracing his shape, as if reassuring themselves that it’s him, that he’s there. Their lips meet almost without thought. The demon’s still a little feverish, Aziraphale’s swaddled in layers that for the first time in a long while feel excessive, but hands find what they need to; there’s no urgency, only tenderness. He drifts away again.

* * *

The sun angles in through a patchy cloud cover. Good news; if it holds, maybe the bombs won’t fall again when darkness comes.

“It can’t happen again, you know.”

”Ssss.”

“No. I mean, after what you did last night. That was like sending up a flare. They’ve already called you out once, they’ll be watching for a long time.”

“Long time’s not forever.”

“Maybe… we can still be friends, Crowley.”

“Friendsss.”

They know Crowley needs to go soon, to not be in this space much longer, where Heaven knows where to find its angel and Hell can track its demon down. But they love each other one more time, like a pair of fumbling teenagers, huddled under the blanket half-dressed and surrounded by the silent agony of a city under siege. Aziraphale finds he’s briefly terrified that Crowley will say it as he comes, afraid he will too, and then thinks that maybe, as they cling, it’s been said anyway. _I love you._

He sleeps again. When he wakens, Crowley’s gone.

There are no air-raids that night.

* * *

He goes on doing his job. He only wonders why, sometimes.

Until he hears a rumor. He sends a curt memo Upstairs about plans to thwart a sacrilege.

He blesses the water himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title reflects a line from Augustine's _Confessions_ used by T. S. Eliot in the _Fire Sermon_ section of _The Waste Land._ Eliot's matter was what he (and Augustine and Buddha) considered the perils of sensuality without spirit.
> 
> Yeah, because I'm just that kind of a geek.
> 
> Next: World Enough And Time


	5. World Enough And Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I’ve been learning a little stage magic.”_  
>    
> _“Seriously?”_
> 
> _He tries producing the coin out of Crowley’s ear; it’s a safe way to come close, for just a moment. It falls into the mousse. If nothing else, this defuses the tension._
> 
> _“You’re bloody kidding me. ‘M’not licking that clean, you know.” (Aziraphale renders a prayer of thanks.) “What else do you do, pratfalls?”_
> 
> _“Well – I suppose it needs a little practice.”_
> 
> _“I’d forgotten this about you, angel. You’re always trying to fit in with them.”_
> 
> _“I’m not the one who changes his hair every five minutes.”_
> 
> _He finds that being with Crowley on any terms is better than being without him. They can do this._

“You said I went too fast. Is walking slow enough?”

The angular silhouette of the demon in the door of the shop is unexpected. And not.

“Didn’t bring the car. Living over in Mayfair now. Just up the road.”

He’s got a bottle with him, the label looks like one of Aziraphale’s favorites, and his whole manner’s casual. When Aziraphale doesn’t outright chase him away, he saunters in – the clothes of this decade bring out the bonelessness of his walk – and looks up and down the shelves, more loaded than when he last saw them, but with almost all of the same books that were there in 1862. “You never sell anything, do you?”

“That was never the point.”

Crowley deposits the bottle on the pearwood desk that he helped the angel pick out.

“Friends?” A steady gaze gives the word a nuanced meaning.

Aziraphale nods. “Aren’t you taking a risk?”

“Nah. I’m the Golden Boy these days. They loved the Ansaphone thing, some of ‘em’re starting to actually get what I do, gobs of frustration from people having to talk to recordings. And the amplified music. Whole generation’s going to go deaf from those amplifiers.”

“I should have known that was you. Frightful.”

“Wait till you see what else I have in mind. Boom boxes.”

“I shudder to think what that might mean.”

He’s surprised how easy it is. The demon’s still beautiful, still somehow _the only one there’s ever going to be_ , but decades of famine have blunted appetite. He’s gotten used to late nights in the bookshop, a decanter, a recording. Neon and excess have sprung up around A.Z. Fell’s; he’s a relic, and the neighboring businesses look out for him, almost as their mascot. He’s the funny old duck. Funny old ducks don’t go speechless from desire.

It’s there, but he can close the drawer on it. Safer for them both.

“Wondered if you were free for dinner. You still do dinner, don’t you?”

“Is that quite safe?”

“When they see what I’m planning with the Conservative Party, they won’t care what else I do. Well, within reason. Just dinner.”

“Where?”

”What about the Ritz? Put an old, bad memory to sleep?”

He hasn’t been back there. It’s an olive branch, and he takes it.

“I don’t suppose they’ll remember the glass you broke.”

“Reckon there’s new staff by now.”

“Let me get my coat.”

* * *

It _is_ still there, and catches him undefended at odd times. Crowley’s never been as fond of the pleasures of the table, though he likes things that are smoky or peppery or bitter (it’s something of a regional preference); there’s not a lot of that in British fare, even at this level, but he also likes things like the dessert mousse, and there’s a moment when he licks it off the spoon and the angel’s afraid all his resolve will come crashing down. He deflects the moment by slipping a coin out of his pocket under the tablecloth.

“I’ve been learning a little stage magic.”

“Seriously?”

He tries producing the coin out of Crowley’s ear; it’s a safe way to come close, for just a moment. It falls into the mousse. If nothing else, this defuses the tension.

“You’re bloody kidding me. ‘M’not licking that clean, you know.” (Aziraphale renders a prayer of thanks.) “What else do you do, pratfalls?”

“Well – I suppose it needs a little practice.”

“I’d forgotten this about you, angel. You’re always trying to fit in with them.”

“I’m not the one who changes his hair every five minutes."

He finds that being with Crowley on any terms is better than being without him. They can do this.

* * *

They see each other sporadically – always drinking, more as time goes on; the angel knows why but says nothing about it. It’s something to do together that feels like those half-asleep mornings, and it walls them off from _someone could find out_ and _I need it to be love_ and _it could have killed you_. It drowns the labyrinth of feelings that could pull them in, lets them swim across it.

They bicker, because it helps them keep each other at a safe arm’s length; Aziraphale still has faith in the Great Plan (no matter how disappointed he’s becoming in some of his superiors), Crowley invents entire new swears to express his opinion of it. When they quarrel outright, it’s always Crowley who stalks away in a sulk and it’s always Crowley who makes it up. At least he doesn’t break anything. So far.

They go back to the Arrangement, too. It’s like an old coat, it’s something that’s always been there, since long before the Bastille, and it’s good to pass their assignments back and forth and enjoy the other’s eye-rolling opinion of what management wants

“Are you really safe?” Aziraphale asks one night, on the third bottle of Montrachet, submerged in a horsehair-stuffed chair at the absolute farthest point in the room from the demon, who’s contriving new ways of slouching on what seemed to be a couch until he sat down on it. The wine’s induced a pleasant inertia. Crowley rises, but only to hold out his glass for the angel to refill – at arm’s length.

“Nothing’s happened so far.” He’s trying another conformation now.

“They hurt you before. I do worry.”

“Ah, that was Hastur and his lot. He’s a jealous bastard, said I was getting above myself, pushed the idea on the rest of ’em. Not in as much favour now. You know they didn’t – ever find anything out. Really. And the boss doesn’t forget where I started out.”

It’s as close as he comes to mentioning what they’ve been to each other.

They space out their meetings, nonetheless, slipping back into the park rendezvous even though there are phones now (and those yes, very annoying answering machines). They never go to Crowley’s flat, it’s not even mentioned; the angel’s sure the bed is still larger than any mortal manufacturer’s ever built.

They don’t go near the stairs.

* * *

Humanity marks a new century; Aziraphale remembers the millennial fervor of 1000, and finds the kerfuffle this time rewardingly subdued. There’s a distinct drying-up of assignments from Heaven and Hell, fewer notes to compare, but:

“Crowley! Don’t – aaaah! You missed that lorry by an inch!”

“Missed it, that’s all that matters.”

“And I think you’re doing three times the speed limit –– “

“Whole point of owning the car.”

“You’re going to – Crowley, I think you made my heart skip a beat – “

The grin’s wide, infectious. “ ‘S’why I do it, angel.”

* * *

“Crowley, are you awake?”

“Mmmhm.”

“Shall we sober up and call it a night? I can’t think the customers will know what to make of you snoring there when I open up tomorrow.”

“Don’t snore. You know better.”

He can’t decide if it feels like thin ice or a door opening.

He’s beginning to think that Crowley’s right, the Heaven and Hell aren’t bothered with them any more, that he can say the words, start over, get it right this time.

And then.

* * *

2008

“Oh, it was the Antichrist all right. Special delivery by Ligur and Hastur. Never see those two fucknuggets again, be too soon.”

Crowley’s barely eating. Even Aziraphale’s a bit off his food. He shouldn’t have brought up Paris.

They’d been close to a quarrel, just when it looked as though there was a chance to rewrite the story that’d started there – and how many times had they dined together since Paris? He’d touched the hot wire, ready to say _and I owe you, too_ , and Crowley’d rolled right over it. He’s angry. He’s working at hiding it, but everything’s askew again.

He forgets the demon’s contempt for Heaven. Crowley forgets that Aziraphale’s still an angel.

“You still care more about that lot of wankers Upstairs than you do about anything down here, don’t you?” _Than you do about me._

“It’s not them, Crowley. It’s the Plan.”

Crowley wields his fork like an assassin’s poniard. “You’re buying their bumf about it. No one’s talked to Her since the Garden.”

“No one’s tried. Maybe I should.”

Crowley looks down at his plate. “Bugger this. Let’s go get drunk.”

Let’s drown it again, full fathom five.

* * *

The idea actually sounds good both drunk and sober.

“We can get hired into the household. Be a doddle. They’re Americans, they thrive on wretched excess.”

“We’ll be thrown together. Constantly. And we’ll never know when we’re being watched.”

It soaks in.

Crowley’s tiddly by now, at the point when a merely clever idea seems like earth-shattering genius.

“Got a plan to put you right off me,” he says, and that’s the first time in forty years (forty years in the wilderness, thinks the angel, distinctly drunk himself) that Crowley’s alluded directly to what they’re both resolutely not doing. He stands, stretches, mimics Aziraphale’s terrible stage-magician patter:

“Nothing up my sleeve, nothing in my hat – “

“You haven’t got a hat.”

“Patience.” He’s almost dancing, Salome in Dresden; comes closer to the staircase than he has since he re-entered the shop, arms upheld, head back (he staggers a little, but stays upright). Turns to face away. There’s a shimmer. He turns again.

She’s a severe, stern-governess woman in a prim black suit, no-nonsense shoes, three-quarter length skirt, red bow at the collar of her blouse. The hair’s full of curl and bounce, the black hat sits jaunty on her head. The dark glasses conjure images of Anne Bancroft in _The Miracle Worker_ , which Aziraphale insisted on seeing at the Classic Cinema Festival (the title alone made it irresistible) and which Crowley pronounced vomitously sentimental.

“Never one for the ladies, were you?” she says. “Meet the Antichrist’s future nanny.”

She’s still beautiful. He’s a little astonished at himself. But Crowley's right, it'll be easier.

The next day, Crowley abruptly goes abroad. Aziraphale knows why: they don’t dare take the chance of the scheme breaking down before its time, stumbling over the minefield of feelings and memories between them.

Every so often, a postcard arrives. One says merely:

_Going back and forth in the Earth, and walking up and down in it._

He stays gone until Warlock turns five.

* * *

2013

“What did you tell your lot?”

The Dowlings never spend time in their garden, but it’s impeccably kept nonetheless, and the gardener shares a bench with the nanny and chats in the evenings after the ghastly little maggot (the mildest of Nanny Ashtoreth’s pet names) has been put to bed.

“Ah, that my Adversary had insinuated herself into the Dowlings’ home, and in order to be sure that that doesn’t give Hell an advantage, I chose to do the same. I’ve been told I showed _just the right amount of initiative_.”

“Pretty much what I told my lot, ‘cept I called you something ruder.”

Delicious, filthy pillow talk returns to memory unbidden, and he pushes it down.

* * *

“Why are you still telling him he can grind the world under his foot?”

“Gotta make it look good, angel. I still get performance reviews.”

“Crowley, we have to get this, or we’ll be fighting on opposite sides.”

“We don’t have to fight at all, you know.”

“That’s the Plan. Neither of us will be allowed to shirk. Unless we can stop this before it starts.”

He doubts, and he hates himself for it.

The sirens, the blackout curtains. _Please, no._

_* * *_

2019

Crowley’s reaction to being called _nice_ blindsides him. It’s like the Ritz, except there’s no glass to break and no freedom to storm off. They’re in the middle of a building full of lunatics shooting live ammunition at each other (with miraculous inaccuracy), they’re looking for an Antichrist that seems to have been mislaid until two days before Armageddon, and _this is not the moment_. It wasn’t that outrageous a thing to have said.

But the pressure against his back reminds him of the Bastille, and he realizes _demons aren’t nice_ is as close as Crowley’s going to come to reminding him of _demons don’t love_ , which he’s never had the courage to take back aloud.

So Mary Hodges has to show up exactly then and refer to this as an _intimate moment._

He can feel Crowley seething until they encounter Bike Girl, which at least gives them something else to think about.

* * *

Crowley’s not giving up. Aziraphale ties himself in knots trying to parse the course of events: the Plan was for the Antichrist to go to the Dowlings, but maybe the Plan also took their interference into account, and made sure that Crowley blinked, so he shouldn’t be castigating himself, it’s all working out as it was meant to, but this isn’t what he wants, and maybe the demon’s only there in the end to tempt him from his duty, can’t stop being a demon any more than an angel can stop being an angel. He can’t believe that only a few days ago he was taking a breath to tell this creature _(no, let's not even think the words, they might fly out of my heart without bothering to reach my lips).  
_

Right now, he doesn’t even _like_ him. So there’s no reason for him to be standing in front of the bookshop with that breath still caught in his throat (he doesn’t need to breathe, he could let it go, but he doesn’t), a fermata, the words arrested the way time stopped in the Bastille.

 _You’re better off without him,_ offers a kind stranger on the pavement. It doesn’t feel that way.

No one’s talked to Her since the Garden.

Maybe it’s time to try.

* * *

Incredibly, he’s _got the book_. Out of an entire burning shop, which the demon apparently ran into headlong because his angel might still be alive inside, he’s managed to rescue Agnes Nutter, with all the notes inside, scorched but intact.

The same can’t be said for Crowley. He’s definitely on the far side of “drunk enough,” and he’s been crying and doesn’t even bother to hide it. But even after Aziraphale doubted him and _forgave_ him and said they had nothing in common, Crowley’s still offering himself up – saying _Not going to go there,_ meaning that’s exactly the next place he’s prepared to go, to be a _receptive body_ for his angel (how many times?).

We’d probably explode. _Oh yes._

 _I believe,_ Aziraphale reflects _, that I’ve been a bit of a shit._

_And you're still calling me your best friend._

Ethereal bodies are supposed to be pure Divine radiance, stripped of every coarser passion; they’re not supposed to fill with messy, unwieldy feelings that cut in shrewd ways, that break things you didn’t know were there to be broken. It’s not pretty, and he doesn’t want it ever to go away, and he's never imagined it would be possible to envy someone the luxury of grief.

Right now, there’s no time to say anything about it.

* * *

“Bunch’ve kids, who’d’ve thought.” It's the first thing he's said since they got off the bus.

“You always had a soft spot for them, Crowley. I remember the Ark.”

“Don’t remind me.”

It’s blind dark in the flat – for a moment, the Blitz recurs to memory again – then Crowley snaps his fingers to summon the soft lights that are all their eyes want at the moment.

He’s never seen this. The wall of perfect foliage, the long greyness of the front room, the disturbing _space_ of it all. He remembers that Crowley hung stars in the firmament before he Fell; that the distances between stars are massive, can take lifetimes to cross, and yet their light arrives. Eventually.

“Think we can do it?”

“It ought to take no more than a small miracle, really.” He’s less certain than he tries to sound. “Just one they won’t be expecting.”

They’ve been sitting hand in hand on the Oxford bus, half-drunk with exhaustion, the lights of the motorway and city sliding over their faces; it seems like the most natural thing in the world to slip into Crowley’s arms. It doesn’t matter who’s watching any more.

“I thought I’d lost you,” Crowley says close to his ear, in a voice rough from fatigue and the scorching fumes of the burning car.

Aziraphale manages a watery chuckle. “I’m afraid you won’t be rid of me that easily.”

“Don’t even joke about that.” Crowley sways a little. “Gotta lie down, angel. Got nothing left here.”

The bed’s as large as he expected. They’re both too shattered to do anything but collapse onto it in all their clothes, limbs lying across each other wherever they happen to fall. It’s like the comfort of an old coat. Eventually his hand finds Crowley’s, more by accident than intent.

“Crowley.”

“Still m’name.” It sounds as if he’s already drifting.

“I… told you more than once that you couldn’t love.”

“ ‘member.”

“I was an idiot.”

“Glad you noticed.”

“I waited too long to tell you.”

“Glad you noticed that too.” Though the demon’s lifted his hand and pressed his lips to it; doesn’t let it go.

“Today I think you loved the world… maybe even more than She does.”

“Verging on blasphemy here.”

“And I would say I feel the same way towards you, only – “

The demon stiffens slightly at _onl_ y. Aziraphale’s driven to Scripture. Habits are hard to break.

“ – I’m not sure I have the right. _Love is patient, love is kind. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres_. I’ve done far too little of that.”

“Got time to work at it, then.” Crowley pulls him closer. "Talk about this tomorrow."

“Do you think we’ll have the chance?"

“Oh yeah, angel. Got this. Got you.”

There is a flowering plant called Angel's Tears. One day, not long from now, Crowley will make a space for it in his garden, in recollection of this night. Aziraphale draws a breath to answer, and finds he's sobbing in deep, slow gasps against the narrow chest; it's exhaustion, and relief, and loss (he can't know the bookshop's restored, won't see it until he's woken in a demon's arms and harrowed Hell for him). _If my faith can move mountains, but I have not love, I am nothing; l ove never fails, but where there are prophecies, they will cease. _

Presently even the dim light of nighttime London begins to blur, and sleep isn't a drug or a vice; it's a gift the demon gives him, holding him through the night.

* * *

“You’re right. He put it all back.”

“Told you.”

The bookshop’s exactly as it was, even the dust; the burned-out candles of the summoning circle, the cold cup of cocoa that he’d half-emptied before opening the line Upstairs. He wonders about something and gets the key to the locking drawer out of the desk.

They’re all still in there: an empty Cabernet bottle with a peeling label, a slender chocolate box, _Seven Pillars of Wisdom_ , a Kodak with curling edges.

When he looks up Crowley’s looking down.

“You saved it. All of it.”

“It was what I had of you.”

Crowley’s suddenly fascinated by the dusty beam of light angling in above the staircase, turns this way and that to examine everything that doesn’t require him to face Aziraphale.

“Let you have a moment to yourself here. Wanna get something from down the block.” The chime sees him out before Aziraphale can answer, and he’s left running his hands over treasures he didn’t expect to see again. Adam’s left a few touches of his own: modern editions of the _Just William_ books, lined up in the window. He thumbs through a few.

The demon chimes back in, carrying a small paper sack.

“Know you had dessert, but I can’t remember you ever turning down another. Good job they had this.”

It’s a small peach tart, and he doesn’t hand it over, but breaks it into fragments, and feeds it to the angel off his fingers, bit by messy, sticky bit.

“The last time before they…”

“I remember.”

Droplets of the syrup land on his lapel and shirtfront. Well, he can miracle them off, though he’ll always know they’re there. Good.

Crowley’s voice is soft as he gives the angel the last crumbs off his fingertips, licks a smear from his upper lip. “Should I leave you alone with your first love here…?”

Aziraphale shakes his head. “Time for that later. _Yonder all before us lie/Desarts of vast Eternitie.._.”

"Um, yeah, something like that."

"How shall we fill them?" He's seen the flat now by daylight, Eden twining up a wall; if Eternity is a desert, Crowley will make it bloom.

"Well, got some ideas..."

“I think I ought to start by telling you I love you. I warn you, I may even come to do so with irritating frequency.”

"Test my patience."

"And by trying to deserve the same from you."

“Hah. I'm thinking of when you’re trying to chase customers out of the shop. Just to embarrass Hell out of you.”

“Fair enough. For my sins.”

“Let Heaven count the sins, angel. Not our job any more." The demon’s fingers are in his curls, taking possession. "Come here."

_finis_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is from Andrew Marvell's hyperbolic "To His Coy Mistress." Marvell was basically saying "Hurry up and take your clothes off, we don't have much time," but Aziraphale is bound to have a different perspective on Eternity.
> 
> If you liked, share, reblog, comment! Authors are always thirsty :)
> 
> Come say hello on Tumblr @CopperPlateBeech


End file.
